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Chances are you at least browsed Amazon's website for gifts this holiday season, and you may have even been gifted something from the company's warehouse.

Amazon is a one-stop-shop for everything from tablets to toys, offering hundreds of thousands of products on a single website. But just how big is the online retail giant?

According to E-commerce experts 500 Friends, Amazon is expected to grow 23 percent this year, with $9,823 pouring in every five seconds, or $117,882 per minute. In total, Amazon is forecast to earn $62 billion in revenue this year. The company's monthly visitors — 80 million people — could fill 24 Malls of America, or 60 Disneylands.

Amazon kept busy over the past year, expanding operations into a number of new countries, beefing up its catalog of streaming content, and launching a new lineup of Kindle devices. The company has found success in the tablet space, nabbing more than half of the Android tablet market in the U.S. earlier this year.

But all the good hasn't come without some controversy. Being the world's largest online retailer makes Amazon a target for online miscreants aiming to break into the company's systems and steal data. Amazon also faced criticism in 2012 from environmentalists, who claim the company failed to invest in renewable electricity for its facilities.

Let's take a look back at some of the most important Amazon-related stories that made headlines this year.

What's new? Although Amazon is best known as an online retailer, the company over the past few years has also become a player in the consumer electronics space with its Kindle e-reader and tablet devices. Early in the year, rumors began surfacing about new version of the Kindle Fire tablet.

Amazon left techies in suspense until September, when it unveiled a new Kindle Fire lineup, including a revamped version of the original tablet, as well as 7-inch and 8.9-inch versions of the new Kindle Fire HD. Also on the docket was a new touch-based, frontlit Kindle known as Paperwhite.

The Internet giant dropped the price of its original, 7-inch Kindle Fire to $159 and gave it an upgraded processor that is 20 percent faster than its predecessor, as well as double the RAM for 40 percent faster performance and longer battery life.

But it wasn't all good news for Kindle devices this year. Several large retailers, including Walmart and Target, pulled the Amazon gadget from its store shelves.

Amazon doesn't seem to be reeling over the loss of its old retail partners, however. The company this fall geared up for a busy holiday shopping season by hiring 50,000 seasonal employees at its U.S. fulfillment centers.

Beyond its many consumer electronics and retail endeavors, Amazon has also been working to establish itself as a player in the video-streaming space with its Prime service, which offers free two-day shipping on all purchases plus unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows for $79 per year. In February, the Web giant teamed up with Viacom to expand Prime Instant Video catalog with streaming access to TV Shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT, and Logo.

Since then, Amazon has further bolstered the service through licensing deals with Epix, NBC, MGM Studios, and Paramount, among others. The Prime Instant Video catalog now features more than 30,000 movies and TV episodes that members can stream to compatible devices like the Kindle Fire HD , iPad, Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii U.

If you were under the impression that Amazon is just a U.S. phenomenon, think again. The Seattle-based company this year has been working hard to expand its business to other countries, beginning with the launch of a Spanish-language Kindle eBook store in April. Amazon then further expanded its Kindle store to India in August, and Brazil in December.

The Amazon Appstore for Android also expanded this year to the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Also, November marked Amazon's first push into Asia, when the company began selling its Kindle devices and opened its Appstore for Android in Japan.

Angela has been a PCMag reporter since January 2012. Prior to joining the team, she worked as a reporter for SC Magazine, covering everything related to hackers and computer security. Angela has also written for The Northern Valley Suburbanite in New Jersey, The Dominion Post in West Virginia, and the Uniontown-Herald Standard in Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of West Virginia University's Perely Isaac Reed School of Journalism.
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